Quicklinks:
Since end of 2005 I have been helping Ahti Jaan and Priit to build Ambient Sound Investments as private asset management vehicle with sensible strategy focus and team. Given my background I have been focusing on technology investments which is about 20% weight in ASI's diversified portfolio. You will find information about what we have invested to, what are we keen to look at etc at ASI site.
I have done individual investments in the projects that I have liked but for one or another reason have not been suitable for ASI. Do get in touch if your project matches following criteria:
- Seed stage equity investment. Team is in place and work has started.
- Funding contribution from me between 50-200K EUR
- Based in Estonia, or pan-Baltic or alternatively South-East Asia
- I'm especially interested in
- Consumer-focused home utility monitoring solutions - both hardware and software
- Non-standard payment platforms, eg mobile users, un-banked users.
- VOIP and related technologies
- Emerging market web services for consumers
Current ongoing projects:
- RedMart takes care of bulky groceries shopping - from their e-shop to doorstop delivery in Singapore. Launched November 2011.
- StartupHighway is a accelerator based in Vilnius, Lithuania, focusing on startups from CEE countries, they launched their first batch in September 2011.
- Insync keeps your Google docs and local storage in sync so you enjoy both collaboration on the web and offline access when needed. In private beta. Founded in Manila, HQd in Singapore.
- ReferralCandy provides customer referral system that e-shop owners can plug in to their Amazon, Shopify, Magento, Etsy etc stores. Invested Q2 2011, live, increasing reveneues, expanding, founded&HQd in Singapore.
- OK2Go is a
travel portal for Russian-speaking people providing both plane and hotel
bookings, both for outbound travel from Russia as well as internal
hotel bookings. Invested end-of-2010, live and expanding.
- ADZ Central
is a intelligent internet advertising buying platform for
enterprise-level marketing needs in SEA region. Invested end-of-2010,
live and expanding.
- Piclyf makes photo sharing easy
and fun for nontechnical people. Launched in mid-2010, early beta with
first thousand clients signing up and clients working on few platforms.
- HUM allows households to monitor their energy. In early alpha with 1 household connected and monitored.
- Garena is one of the fastest
growing internet multiplayer gaming communities, emerging from
South-East Asia. Status as of late 2010 - tens of millions monthly
users, has taken in major new external funding, going too well to be
true.
- Fraktal builds a simple CMS service that does not suck. Global service, focused on small sites and customers. Status as of late 2010 - growing, albeit slowly.
- PoohTech is investing in electronic payment and ticketing businesses in Tallinn/Estonia/Baltic States. Payment service CMART is live in
Latvia as well as Estonian public transport e-ticket system
where latter is used by about 50% of Tallinn public transport users.
Status as of late 2010 - Latvian payment service doing not too well,
E-ticket system doing well.
- Crushpad provides facilities and services for making your own wines without chateau & Golden Retriever. SF/US/Global. Service is live and growing.Status as of late 2010 - growing according to and beyond plans.
Deadpool:
- Roadside is concept lab stage project in Tallinn whos tricycles are
eco-friendly alternative to passenger cars and public transport for
your 5-10km trips. Status as of late 2010 - work on this stopped in 2009 without much success.
- SuInfra
provides digital work infrastructure for code-producing SMEs: wiki +
bug-tracker + sourcecode repository + monitoring + VPN + SSH + user
management .., integrated to single sign-on, based on free software. Status as of late 2010 - has few users but seeing it taking new users only slowly we rolled it into Random Consult's hosting services.
- Announced 100K Baltics Challenge on first half of 2011. Not a huge success.
For background info on myself see my proffessional profile at LinkedIn, personal profile at Orkut and see what I have seen at Flickr. When contacting me - I prefer you to text me on Skype:toivo, if I dont know you - give reasonable explanation in authorization request. Go for toivoattoivodotee if Skype fails for you/you fail at Skype. I do speak PGP (toivo.annus.asc).
Funding resources on the web that I like - and you may like as well - in no particular order:
Engineering resources on the web that I like - and you may like as well - in no particular order:
